I'm not here.

How do I want to work these days? Well, I don’t want to worry that returning home at the end of the day will present a danger to my family. I’d like to see the low key charms of our state again. I think about favorite detours, oddball destinations and forlorn former haunts that I fear will fade away before Coronavirus does the same. How long must I wait to eat Slappy’s chicken? Will I see a whirligig again? Are there still pupusa fillings that I’ve never sampled? Is some neighborhood bird eating all the figs I used to steal? I hate that bird. 

I’d like to drive less, and stay longer. Who needs the manic bouncing around of 2019. I’d like to share new wine, and listen to what you all think about it. Even though we are accustomed to telling stories picked up at Italian farms, I’d like to talk less, and think about what you have to say. But here’s the sticking point: safely occupying that role is a challenge I can’t really figure out. I wish we could meet outside and taste wine at a picnic table while a refreshing breeze dutifully blows all the Coronavirus away. In reality, I look at data and think the only rational thing to do, for the people I love and the customers I’d like to see again, is to stay home, and request that as many of my coworkers as possible do the same. I look at any indoor space and think, “did somebody sneeze here?” I’m a man with a constant dry hacking cough, not a sound that inspires confidence, no matter how Covid-free I may be. My lungs are a little busted. If I traipse around North Carolina doing the (let’s face it highly inessential) work of selling wine face-to-face and I get someone sick, well that would be pretty selfish. I like money, but people are more fun, and make better drinking buddies. Ultimately even bozos matter a fair amount more than new wine placements. 

When North Carolina gets to a steady phase three and COVID is in full retreat we can concern ourselves with returning to how we want to work, the pattern of activities that fills our days with meaning and happiness. RIght now I think that any unnecessary random wandering on our part is unhelpful to the people diligently working to contain this pandemic. 

Let’s do business. We can deliver piles of wine to your establishment, in the contactless/virus-free manner we’ve been doing since early March. Keeping our office/warehouse as solely the workspace of our two-person delivery operation is far safer than returning to “before” when I was barging in there all the time, grabbling samples and licking door handles. I’ll accept that summer 2020 isn't the time to meet and chat. Instead, we’ll drop off full sample bottles and information-rich tasting sheets. We’ll Zoom meet if you’d like a simulacra of “tasting wine together.” An added bonus of this approach is you can see the inside my lair of solitude, full of taxidermied large land mammals, oil paintings of minor 18th century Italian nobility, and teetering mouldering piles of Martha Stewart Living back-issues. And so many hairless cats.

Vera on the taco trail.